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News and Views from the Global SouthFri, 13 Sep 2019 21:17:01 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.10A New World? Are the Americas Returning to Old Problems?http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/new-world-americas-returning-old-problems/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-world-americas-returning-old-problems
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/new-world-americas-returning-old-problems/#respondThu, 12 Sep 2019 17:41:38 +0000Jan Lundiushttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163247When I in 1980 first arrived in America it was a new world to me. I went from New York to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and like so many visitors and migrants before me I was overwhelmed by both familiar and strange impressions. Familiar due to books I had read and movies I […]

When I in 1980 first arrived in America it was a new world to me. I went from New York to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and like so many visitors and migrants before me I was overwhelmed by both familiar and strange impressions. Familiar due to books I had read and movies I had seen, strange since I encountered unexpected things and new because both I and several of those I met compared themselves to the “old world”, i.e. Euroasia and parts of Africa.

A sense of uniqueness, admiration for an assumed freshness and difference, can be discerned in the writing of several American writers. Particularly during the 19th century we encounter ideas about wide horizons and an urge to experience and subdue what was assumed to be a wilderness with hidden riches and alluring possibilities. A “Wild West” epitomized in Horace Greeley´s 1865 phrase “Go West, young man, and grow up with the country.” An abundance of examples of exuberant feelings may be found in Walt Whitman´s poetry:

All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, a varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the
march,
Pioneers! O pioneers! 1

In the southern hemisphere, Walt Whitman has his equivalent in Pablo Neruda, who in a poem likened ”his” continent to a beloved woman:

When I look at the shape of America on the map,
my love, it is you I see:
the heights of copper on your head, your slender waist,
with throbbing rivers, sweet hills and meadows
and in the cold of the south your feet in its geography of duplicated gold.
Love, when I touch you not only have my hands explored your delight
but boughs and lands, fruits and water,
the springtime that I love, the desert moon, the breast of the wild dove,
the smoothness of stones worn away by the waters of the seas or the rivers
and the red thickness of the bush where thirst and hunger lie in wait.
And thus my spacious country welcomes me, little America, in your body. 2

However, it is easy to forget that this ”new” and eagerly coveted world was old as well. People coming from Asia settled there between 42,000 and 17,000 years ago. The last wave of migrants before the Europeans came were the Inuit who around 3500 BCE settled in the Arctic areas of North America. Nevertheless, these original settlers suffered drastic changes, their traditional way of life was crushed and transformed by a steady stream of Eurasian and African peoples. Migrants, slaves, and conquerors arrived in the ”new world”, settled and multiplied while the indigenous population plummeted. The newcomers did not only bring with them their culture but also diseases – influenza, pneumonic plagues, typhus, measles, cholera, malaria, mumps, yellow fever, pertussis, and smallpox, killing millions. It is assumed that 90 percent of the indigenous population in the hardest-hit areas died. This was one of the greatest human catastrophes in history, far exceeding The Black Death, which during five years in the mid-fourteen century killed up to one-third of the inhabitants of Europe and Asia. On top of this disaster came repression, expulsion, genocide, and enslavement of the natives. Nevertheless, new ideas and cultural expressions grew out of this cataclysm, cultures mingled and gave rise to something new.

Accordingly, the Americas and the Caribbean do in a certain sense remain a ”new world”, a habitat that has undergone transformations more drastic and profound than those that befell most societies in the ”old world”. The vibrant counter-culture of North America, the magic realism of Latin American authors, revolutionary and radical movements, pedagogy of the oppressed and liberation theology, all accompanied by stirring music mixing rhythms and tunes from all over the world. A mighty wave of cultural inspiration moving from south to north, from east to west. In distant Sweden I and my friends became inspired by such cultural contributions brought to us by movies, books, and records, but not only us, they also reached people from the entire ”third world”, Africa, south and southeast Asia, who in their turn contributed to the emergence of a youthful, radical and global culture.

I still felt this enthusiasm when I, due to various jobs and commitments, traveled back and forth across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The countries I visited still carried unhealed wounds of colonialism, plutocracy, and racism and LAC remains the most unequal region in the world, where injustices undermine the economic potential and wellbeing of its population. Nevertheless, in those days most nations appeared to recuperate from years of dictatorial repression and unpopular foreign interventions. Welfare programs, democracy, and social justice appeared to be on the rise. I even assumed that a new wave of inspiring change could come from the north, from a USA that no longer tried to hinder the development of true democracy south of its border:

It’s coming to America first.
The cradle of the best and of the worst.
It’s here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it’s here they got the spiritual thirst.
It’s here the family’s broken
and it’s here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way.
Democracy is coming to the USA. 3

But alas, people of the USA has chosen the narcissistic plutocrat Donald J. Trump as their president and ”when America sneezes the whole world catches cold” 4 To me the Americas no longer appear to be particularily ”new”, instead they seem to be stuck in bygone times, or are caught by a nostalgia for times that were even worse than they are now.

Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala continoue to suffer from crime and corruption. In January, Guatemala recently expelled a UN-backed anti-corruption commission investigating the affairs of its president Jimmy Morales. Despite Trump’s tough stance on migration, domestic instability and violence in Central American countries are likely to continue to force people to leave their homes. In Nicaragua, a power-drunk and former revolutionary leader, Daniel Ortega, claims that ”thieves” and ”coup-mongers” are creating unrest and sends journalists and protesters to jail. Violent street fighting have caused several hundred deaths thousands more have fled to neighboring Costa Rica. In 1918, Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez became the first person to lead Cuba outside the Castro family, which had been in power for more than six decades. However, Cubans are still waiting for democracy while Bermudez and his ministers declare that a new course is not likely to be set, having as their motto ”we are continuity”. The powerful and violent drug cartels of Colombia and Mexico are far from being subdued. Mexico’s new government has repeatedly assured the world about its commitment to combat druglords and rampant violence, but corruption remains endemic in Mexican society, reducing foreign investment and wiping out jobs from small and medium-sized businesses. 5

In Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro blames his country´s inflation rate of 10 million percent on an ”imperialist conspiracy” while hundreds of thousands Venezuelans are fleeing from home and country after a persistent struggle to find food and medicine. Many are arriving in neighboring Colombia, where in spite of positive reporting, drug lords and militias continue to thrive. In Brazil, the newly elected Jair Bolsonaro almost immediately issued a series of executive orders impinging the rights of minorities. Bolsonaro has been praising Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, the most notorious torturer during General Ernesto Geisel´s dictatorship (1974-1979) and it appears as if he is considering oppressive military dictatorships of bygone days to have been beneficial for all, declaring he wants to ”make America great again. I want to make Brazil great, Paraguay great, Bolivia great, Uruguay — all of our countries.” 6 Evo Morales who since 2006 has led Bolivia is trying to continue his hold on power. He recently asked Bolivia´s Supreme Court to nullify the results of a 2016 referendum which rejected his bid to run for a fourth term and forced it to scrap limits for every political office in the country. Argentina´s former president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who in spite of being embroiled in a myriad of ongoing corruption investigations remains popular with voters is expected to be President Mauricio Macri’s main competitor for the presidency in the October elections.

Maybe the Americas is not a new world after all. Like so many nations in the ”old world”, worrisome numbers of their leaders and voters seem to be stuck in an absurd nostalgia for a non-existent golden age of bygone eras.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/new-world-americas-returning-old-problems/feed/0Big Power Conflicts are Increasingly Taking Place in Outer Spacehttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/big-power-conflicts-increasingly-taking-place-outer-space/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=big-power-conflicts-increasingly-taking-place-outer-space
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/big-power-conflicts-increasingly-taking-place-outer-space/#respondThu, 12 Sep 2019 09:18:31 +0000Daniel A. Porrashttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163242Daniel A. Porras is a fellow for space security at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR).

Whether it be the US, Russia, China, or any other major military force, all employ space capabilities to some extent.

As a result of this dependence, some militaries are developing the tools to deny their adversaries the use and benefit of space systems. These capabilities come in several different categories, but they all share one common feature: they are threats to space systems. This is not unexpected.

Much the same as aircraft and anti-aircraft weapons, it was only a matter of time before military actors began developing the means to neutralise advantages gained from space.

Yet while this technology has previously been limited to a few players, new innovations in asymmetric warfare are quickly changing the dynamics of what might be conflict in space.

Moreover, there is a very small possibility (and it is highly remote) that some capabilities be put in space that can target objects in the atmosphere or on the surface of the Earth. These weapon systems would represent a threat from space systems.

As unlikely as this possibility might be, it is sufficiently real for some states who see counterspace weapons as possible insurance against attempts at ‘dominance’ in outer space.

Daniel A. Porras

The Secure World Foundation (SWF) — a think-tank based in Washington, DC — maintains a global counterspace capabilities assessment. This open-source document uses publicly available information to show which countries are developing what capabilities.

The principal actors pursuing such capabilities are the US, Russia, China and India. While the assessment includes a few other outliers that might have the building blocks for counterspace capabilities (i.e. Israel, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea), recent events indicate that there are more countries now actively seeking ‘weapons in space’, including France and Japan.

There are four main types of counterspace capabilities. The first is ‘kinetic’, namely those that use physical force to cause damage to a satellite. This includes anti-satellite missiles (like the one recently used by India) or even co-orbital drones. These drones are highly manoeuvrable craft that can repair, refuel or even remove satellites from orbit. Such tools can be used for beneficial purposes, like debris removal, or possibly to attack satellites.

The second type of counterspace capability is ‘non-kinetic’, which use high-powered energy to cause disruption or damage to satellites. At present, several countries are developing lasers that could be used in this way, including the US, Russia, China and France.

In the 1980s, then-US President Ronald Reagan launched an initiative called Star Wars, which consisted of satellites with missile interceptors that could destroy ICBMs in orbit.

The main problem with kinetic and non-kinetic weapons is that when they damage or destroy a satellite, they also create debris, which does not necessarily come back down to Earth right away. As one expert once told me, it is like having a war in which the bullets never stop flying.

The other two categories of capabilities are less destructive but are much more prevalent. Electronic counterspace capabilities, which includes jamming and spoofing, is easily accessible to many actors, including non-state actors. The same can be said for cyber capabilities, which can be deployed for espionage, surveillance, or even destruction of space systems.

One of the major concerns with these two categories of capabilities is that there is no consensus around when ‘interference’ becomes an attack. This is particularly worrying as NATO just announced plans to declare that an ‘attack’ on a satellite is enough to trigger collective self-defence. There is no indication whether there is consensus among NATO members as to what is considered an attack on a space object, nor whether that same view is shared with any other countries.

Threats ‘from’ space systems

While the counterspace capabilities listed above describe current threats ‘to’ space systems, there is another challenge that features often in space security talks, namely threats ‘from’ space systems.

These are different because rather than targeting space objects, these capabilities would be able to target objects in the atmosphere or on the ground. At present, no country has ever even hinted at plans to deploy such weapons, except the US.

In the 1980s, then-US President Ronald Reagan launched an initiative called Star Wars, which consisted of satellites with missile interceptors that could destroy ICBMs in orbit. This idea has long been refuted as being about as technically or economically feasible as deploying ‘pink dragons’ in space.

Nevertheless, space-based missile interceptors are being discussed by the US once again, albeit at a very superficial level. The concern here is that space-based missile defence is a pretext to deploy missiles that can strike surface targets. And while many experts cite the extreme remoteness of the possibility of such a weapon system ever being deployed, the mere perception of a threat is creating real challenges in multilateral discussions.

Multilateral efforts to mitigate threats

UN member states acknowledged the growing challenges to space security decades ago, yet there is little progress on this issue. States are generally divided into two camps. Some (mostly Western, developed states) are concerned about threats ‘to’ their space systems, and want voluntary measures to provide transparency in space. This includes measures like launch notifications, sharing orbital data and publishing national space policies.

Others (led by Russia and China but also including most of the rest of the world), are not opposed to voluntary measures but would prefer to see a treaty, which is legally binding. These states are also concerned by the possibility (albeit still a remote one) that someone might one day put weapons in space that can threaten people on the ground. For these states, only a legally binding instrument will suffice.

For the moment, there does not seem to be much room for consensus. The two camps in space security discussions continue to hold firm on their positions. One option for moving forward might be to focus on specific issues that affect all, such as the testing of destructive anti-satellite technology that creates debris.

However, more ambitious solutions will likely continue to be out of reach, particularly if space-based missile defence continues to feature in the background of multilateral discussions without being directly addressed.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/big-power-conflicts-increasingly-taking-place-outer-space/feed/0Calls for Reform, Research and Reorganisation in Leprosy Healthcarehttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/calls-reform-research-reorganisation-leprosy-healthcare/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=calls-reform-research-reorganisation-leprosy-healthcare
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/calls-reform-research-reorganisation-leprosy-healthcare/#respondThu, 12 Sep 2019 05:42:55 +0000Stella Paulhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163227Rachna Kumari of Munger in Eastern India’s Bihar state is not yet 30. But she’s already been married at 18, abandoned by her husband after she was diagnosed with leprosy and become an award-winning advocate of the disease. She has traversed a long road. And this week she undertook another step in her journey to […]

The 20th International Leprosy Congress (ILC) is being held Sept. 10 to 13 in Manila, Philippines. The conference is hosted every three years and was last held in China in 2016. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella PaulMANILA, Sep 12 2019 (IPS)

Rachna Kumari of Munger in Eastern India’s Bihar state is not yet 30. But she’s already been married at 18, abandoned by her husband after she was diagnosed with leprosy and become an award-winning advocate of the disease. She has traversed a long road. And this week she undertook another step in her journey to fly to Manila, Philippines, as a delegate at the 20th International Leprosy Congress (ILC).

The grassroots leader, who is employed by the International Leprosy Elimination Partnership (ILEP), has also previously traveled to Ethiopia and China to share stories about her life and her work.

Prior to attending the ILC yesterday Sept. 12, she participated in the Global Forum of People’s Organisations on Hansen’s Disease, an event co-organised by Japan’s The Nippon Foundation (TNF) and Sasakawa Health Foundation (SHF). The global forum gave her valuable insights into the universal challenges of leprosy-affected and leprosy advocates such as stigma and lack of financial sustainability, Kumari said.

She said she also gained technical education and management skills, which she feels are crucial for success in advocacy.

She added that when she carries out her work in communities across Munger, she has no official identification to show many of the Hansen’s disease-affected persons she comes across, many of whom are weary of strangers as they continue to face discrimination and stigma.

This simple form of accreditation, Kumari said, played a huge role in advocacy against the disease.

“[In] my community, I have nothing to prove that I am an advocate, a knowledge builder. So, people doubt me, they don’t know if they [can] trust me. A simple document of identification can be a big step to build trust between a community worker and her community,” Kumari told IPS.

Maya Ranavare, who works as a treasurer in Association of People Affected by Leprosy (APAL), in western India’s Maharashtra state, says that partnerships among organisations must not remain in closed rooms but should instead result in collective action that reaches communities.

“There is a sense of competition among people’s organisations. Instead, we must act collectively. Also, if it is a partnership, then there should not be duplicity. Tasks should be distributed evenly. If one organisation is doing mobilisation, other should work on technical education. This will increase everyone’s skill and ability,” Ranavare told IPS.

According to Dr Arturo Cunanan, the Chief Medical Officer of the Culion Sanitarium and General Hospital in the Philippines, there needs to be programmatic changes in the government public health system. Budgetary allocation, innovation, new research and sensitisation of healthcare workers are all needs of the hour.

“Leprosy elimination is now like a car that has run out of fuel. We need that fuel right now. The fuel is innovation. Take vaccination for example. Why is that even after centuries, we still don’t have a vaccination for universal application?

“Also, we need innovative, easier ways to diagnose leprosy. If you look at Tuberculosis, there are several ways to do a quick test and find out if a person has it. But for leprosy, we still have only clinical test. We need new tools, quicker ways and for all of that we need new investments in innovation, research,“ Cunanan told IPS.

The ILC started runs Sep 10 to 13. The congress will identify the priorities for a future course of action to end leprosy. Currently there are 200,000 new leprosy cases reported every year across the world, with 60 percent of those new cases originating in India.

According to the organisers, the congress will identify the priorities for the future course of action for achieving zero leprosy. The congress also emphasised the importance of partnerships and a new future partnership among the leprosy-affected people’s organisations has already started between HANDA – a Chinese NGO– and PERMATA, an NGO based in Indonesia.

HANDA, which has recently been recognised by the government of China for their skills in project management, finance management and organisational re-structuring, is set to share these crucial skills with PERMATA.

“We will soon host a delegation from PERMATA in our Guanzhou office. They have a special interest in finance management and we are ready to share our expertise and experience in that area with them,” Sally Qi of HANDA told IPS.

SHF was instrumental in building this partnership and encouraged both HANDA and PERMATA to start a dialogue on skill sharing, Qi added.

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]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/calls-reform-research-reorganisation-leprosy-healthcare/feed/0The Push for Peace-From the Global Village to the Global Neighborhoodhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/push-peace-global-village-global-neighborhood/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=push-peace-global-village-global-neighborhood
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/push-peace-global-village-global-neighborhood/#respondWed, 11 Sep 2019 17:54:13 +0000Siddharth Chatterjeehttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163232From the ashes of a tragedy that wiped out almost 90% of the city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, an institute called the Hiroshima Peacebuilders Center (HPC) rose like a phoenix of hope that is pioneering the creation of a global pool of peacebuilders. It is driven by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development […]

From the ashes of a tragedy that wiped out almost 90% of the city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, an institute called the Hiroshima Peacebuilders Center (HPC) rose like a phoenix of hope that is pioneering the creation of a global pool of peacebuilders. It is driven by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development declaration that “there can be no sustainable development without peace and no peace without sustainable development.”

Hiroshima underwent miraculous post-war reconstruction after World War II, and it epitomizes speed, innovation, technology and efficiency which marks the Japanese character of utter discipline and loyalty to the vision. An architectural and engineering feat of reconstruction.

Today HPC supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, trains professional peacebuilders to assist war – torn societies and they are doing a remarkable job. I have seen this first hand and I have had the privilege of facilitating two mid-career courses which brings together Japanese and non-Japanese United Nations professionals who work in different conflict affected parts of the world.

The UN Secretary General Mr Antonio Guterres once made a profound remark- “the world is in pieces and we need world peace”. With over 65 million people displaced, due to conflict, instability, climate shocks and sheer degrading poverty, the message from the UN Secretary General is a clarion call to action. Japan has stepped up. In fact, Japan’s pacifist constitution may hold the key to a world free of conflict, violence and instability.

At the HPC, various programmes are being implemented to develop practical knowledge, skills and experience in peacebuilding and development among civilians, an important contribution towards transforming conflict-prone countries into peaceful nations engaged in the pursuit of SDG 16.

Having seen both worlds – as a former combat veteran and later as an international civil servant, where I have been working to bring dignity to people ravaged by war in various countries – I know the importance of such institutions. For instance, the many years of my UN career spent in Somalia, South Sudan Iraq, Darfur, between 1997 to date, will always remain a poignant reminder of the disparate harm that women and children are predisposed to whenever one form or other of humanitarian crisis arises.

With recent technological advances on one hand giving a leg-up, and on the other rolling back progress on the United Nations Charter’s vision of getting the peoples of the world ‘to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours‘, institutions such as HPC are increasingly needed.

The strings of guilt have continued to pull at the collective global heart after the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In subsequent years, the world has drafted the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as numerous treaties and conventions, all seeking to ensure global peace.

By telescoping distance and time, scientific advances have given us the ‘global village’, yet the more people have of things that bring them together, the more they have tended to invent others that divide them.

One such development is the indisputable evidence that all of humanity is vulnerable in current rates of ecological degradation. However, while the web of interdependence continues to thicken, debates about what needs to be done and by whom rages, delaying consensus on remedial action.

The reasons we need citizens to drive global neighbourhood are legion: maintaining peace and order, expanding economic activity, combating pandemic diseases, deterring terrorists and sharing scarce resources are just a few of them.

We cannot have any illusions about the scope of the challenge ahead. As we move towards working with others, clashes between the familiar and the different are expected. Stresses will result from people having to come to terms with new circumstances.

A transformation of the mindset will be a key driver of the triple nexus of peace, security and development as the world seeks to draft a post-conflict agenda. To achieve this, a critical mass of leaders who can push countries to adapt universal norms of good neighborhoods is needed, which is what institutions like HPC are helping to build.

While human survival and resilience against new diseases must depend on scientific discoveries, there must be a part of humanity that checks the temptation to turn those same discoveries into ever more efficient killing machines.

More international institutions that work to create a generation of citizens as the dynamos of the vehicle of peacebuilding need to be established. That one of the leaders towards that vision is a region that carries the scars of the worst devastation caused by war provides inspiration that a moral revolution is possible, even as the scientific revolution continues.

Japan’s former Prime Minster and Nobel laureate Mr. Eisaku Sato once said, “Japan is the only country in the world to have suffered the ravages of atomic bombing. That experience left an indelible mark on the hearts of our people, making them passionately determined to renounce all wars”.

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/push-peace-global-village-global-neighborhood/feed/0‘Conference Emphasises Need for Partnerships to Create a World Without Leprosy’http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/conference-emphasises-need-partnerships-create-world-without-leprosy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=conference-emphasises-need-partnerships-create-world-without-leprosy
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/conference-emphasises-need-partnerships-create-world-without-leprosy/#respondWed, 11 Sep 2019 17:06:08 +0000Stella Paulhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163224Forty years ago, Yohei Sasakawa saw his father moved to tears after meeting and witnessing the suffering of people affected by leprosy – also known as Hansen’s disease. Not only did the patients have a physical illness, but they also suffered from social exclusion and discrimination. It made the young Sasakawa vow to work for […]

Forty years ago, Yohei Sasakawa saw his father moved to tears after meeting and witnessing the suffering of people affected by leprosy – also known as Hansen’s disease. Not only did the patients have a physical illness, but they also suffered from social exclusion and discrimination. It made the young Sasakawa vow to work for the elimination of leprosy from the world – just as his father had been doing.

Decades later, after visiting 120 countries and having meetings with countless policy makers and state leaders, Sasakawa – now the World Health Organisation (WHO) Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination – is delivering on his promise.

At the first day of the 20th International Leprosy Congress (ILC), being held in Manila, Philippines, the chairperson ofThe Nippon Foundation (TNF) called for activists, scholars and those affected the globe over, to rally behind the goal of a world free of stigma, discrimination and violation of human rights of those affected by leprosy. The ILC, which ends Sep 13, is supported by TNF sister organisation the Sasakawa Health Foundation (SHF).

Sharing his experiences, he recalled how he, TNF and SHF lobbied the United Nations to recognise the elimination of stigma against leprosy-affected people as a human rights issue.

Sasakawa reminded delegates that it was a tough journey against several odds as policy makers and diplomats showed little interest in the human rights of leprosy-affected people. He told the congress how during a 2003 U.N. Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva, only five members attended the event to discuss stigma as a human rights violation in a room that could accommodate 50.

Not one to give up, Sasakawa kept pursuing the issue until finally in December 2010 the U.N. General Assembly unanimously adopted the resolution on elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members and accompanying principle and guidelines was passed.

“I believe the elimination has been an important milestone in my journey,” Sasakawa said.

But despite the U.N. resolution and various local laws at country level worldwide abolishing policies like segregation and isolation of the leprosy-affected, society still stigmatises and discriminates against Hansen’s disease patients as well those who work within the field, like health care workers etc.

He said one example of this remains is the classification of leprosy as a neglected tropical disease.

“I would like to express my opposition to leprosy being considered as one of the neglected tropical diseases. Leprosy has never been neglected even for a moment by both persons affected and by people who have worked hard for their betterment. In my opinion, this medical terminology feels like it is looking down on the patients and also shows a lack of respect towards those are fighting against leprosy today. Leprosy is an ongoing issue.”

However, Sasakawa also acknowledged that in other areas — such as the partnerships and networking — there has been great progress. The Global Partnership for Zero Leprosy network was a significant step forward.

“The collaboration will greatly enhance our work towards achieving ‘Zero Leprosy,'” he said, adding that the strengthening of these partnerships, especially with the governments, was crucial to reach the common goal of a leprosy-free world.

“Whenever I go abroad, I always meet with the national leaders of the countries. We cannot solve the issue of leprosy without their understanding and support. Without their support, we cannot secure the budget for activities to eliminate leprosy and the associated discrimination,” he reminded the congress.

Rachna Kumari, of International Federation of Anti-leprosy Associations or ILEP, who is based in Munger in Eastern India’s Bihar state, told IPS: “We cannot end stigma just by treating leprosy as a health issue.”

If only health workers are assigned to work on leprosy, they will work on medication. That is not enough to solve the problem we face. So, we need education. Government must include information on leprosy in school books. There must be billboards and large posters which can educate both patients and healthcare workers. Only with such a holistic approach we can win this,” Kumari said.

Earlier, delivering the keynote speech, the Philippine Secretary of Health Francisco Duque asserted that his government remains serious about respecting the rights of leprosy-affected people.

“The vision of our Universal healthcare for the Filipino people is deeply tied to the aspirations of the 2016-2020 global strategy for the leprosy and goal number 3 of the SDGs or the sustainable development goals. We remain committed to these goals and aspirations. We are committed to zero stigma, zero disability, zero transmission and zero disease,” Duque told the congress.

Duque also stressed the importance of partnerships to achieve the goals yet unmet.

“We are only a few months away form 2020 and our midterm strategy is only getting underway. We must work together. This year’s conference emphasises the need for partnerships to create a world without leprosy. And our success and your success may define the relations we have made and continue to make.

Acknowledging stigma as a “barrier for early detection and treatment“ of leprosy, Huong Thi Giang Tran, WHO’s Director for Disease Control in the Western Pacific also said that stigma limits the opportunity for life and leads to social and economic exclusion. She called for the addressing of stigma at the policy level.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/conference-emphasises-need-partnerships-create-world-without-leprosy/feed/0Nothing For Us, Without Us – Hansen’s Disease-Affected Tell International Gatheringhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/nothing-us-without-us-hansens-disease-affected-tell-international-gathering/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nothing-us-without-us-hansens-disease-affected-tell-international-gathering
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/nothing-us-without-us-hansens-disease-affected-tell-international-gathering/#respondWed, 11 Sep 2019 12:26:57 +0000Ben Kritzhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163218Stronger government action to fight stigma and discrimination, more government funding for health and non-health support programmes, and a larger role for people’s organisations in developing policy towards Hansen’s disease treatment and eradication are still needed for eliminating the disease. This was some of the recommendations made by participants of the first ever Global Forum of […]

Jennifer Quimno of the Coalition of Leprosy Advocates of the Philippines (CLAP) (centre) is joined by Sri Lanka's Shagana Thiygalingam (L) and Amarasinghe Manjula (R) after Quimno delivered the recommendations presented by the Global Forum of People's Organisations on Hansen's Disease to the International Leprosy Congress in Manila on September 11. Credit: Ben Kritz/IPS

By Ben KritzMANILA, Sep 11 2019 (IPS)

Stronger government action to fight stigma and discrimination, more government funding for health and non-health support programmes, and a larger role for people’s organisations in developing policy towards Hansen’s disease treatment and eradication are still needed for eliminating the disease.

This was some of the recommendations made by participants of the first ever Global Forum of People’s Organisations on Hansen’s Disease today, Sept. 11 during a presentation to global academics, scientists, researchers, health staff, partners and those affected by the disease at the 20th International Leprosy Congress (ILC).

Jennifer Quimno, secretary of the Coalition of Leprosy Advocates of the Philippines (CLAP), was chosen by the forum participants to represent the group.

The ILC, which is currently being held in Manila, Philippines, is hosted every three years and was last held in China in 2016.

Prior to the start of the congress, Japan’s Sasakawa Health Foundation (SHF) and The Nippon Foundation (TNF), which support elimination of the disease as well as various organisations of persons affected by the disease, held a global gathering from Sept. 7 to 10. For the first time, organisations of those affected by Hansen’s disease from 23 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean met to share their know-how and experiences in eliminating Hansen’s disease.

Along with recommendations for eliminating discriminatory laws and practices, including social, psychological, and economic support in Hansen’s disease management programmes, and giving people affected by the disease a greater voice in policy formulation, the forum debated that a shift in terminology from “leprosy” to “Hansen’s disease” be promoted to help combat the historic stigma associated with the disease. No consensus was reached, however.

The recommendations called for comprehensive action and the involvement of non-health agencies and other stakeholders, because areas such as clean water and sanitation, proper housing, education, and dignified work are all, in the view of people’s organisations, critical to efforts to stamp out the disease.

The forum also called for a much greater role for people’s organisations in sustaining Hansen’s Disease treatment, rehabilitation, and services, and in promoting dignity, equality, and respect for human rights.

“Hansen’s disease is more than a disease caused by a bacterium. Poverty, institutional, social and political neglect, complacency and the structural invisibility of vulnerable populations contribute to the perpetuation of Hansen’s disease,” the final draft of the forum’s recommendations read.

Other key recommendations presented to the ILC by the forum include: More funding for research to fill scientific knowledge gaps that still exist (much remains unclear about the transmission of the disease); greater focus by national programmes on case detection, disability prevention, and rehabilitation during treatment; and more funding for “care after cure” programmes, including psychological, social, and economic rehabilitation.

To combat the stigma associated with the disease, the forum urged the widest possible dissemination and adoption by governments, NGOs, and other stakeholders of United Nations guidelines for the elimination of stigma and discrimination.

The conclusions also made a firm demand for the elimination of all existing discriminatory laws and practises globally, saying that this would further require “affirmative and reparation policies,” in order to be truly effective in promoting equality.

The people’s organisations also made a call for a greater role in government policy-making toward leprosy. They did not neglect improvements in their own capabilities as well. While calling on governments to develop measurable action plans, the people’s organisations noted they must improve their effectiveness by through strengthening networks, and engaging more productively with governments.

Hope for the future, but a few uncertainties

Participants at the global forum who attended the first day of the ILC expressed hope the recommendations would lead to positive action, but noted uncertainties remain.

“Being able to do this at the ILC is a milestone for us, to have our perspective heard,” Frank Onde, president of CLAP, told IPS. While people affected by Hansen’s disease have regularly participated in the ILC, Onde felt this was the first time recommendations were presented in an organised way.

For Indonesia’s Ermawati, a member of PerMaTa, “Attending this congress is like a dream, to come from my village to be involved in a gathering like this,” she told IPS. “It’s inspiring, and I hope it would inspire others [affected by leprosy] to join us and help others.”

Ermawati was hopeful the recommendations would lead to greater awareness and reduce stigma, particularly the discrimination against women in her country. “I hope it leads to greater acceptance, particularly of us women. In my country, the stigma is very great.” One problem faced by Indonesian women afflicted with leprosy is that they cannot marry; if laws in an area do not actually prohibit it, the culture in most places encourages men to shun these women.

Shagana Thiyagalingam, who is from Sri Lanka, felt that Quimno’s presentation was inspiring. Quimno spoke of how after both she and her father had contracted the disease, but how she still continued her studies currently works with the government health department. “Her story was so motivational,” Shagana told IPS. “It should encourage other women to come forward and feel less stigma.”

While optimistic about what lies ahead, CLAP’s Onde, and his Indonesian counterpart Paulus Manek, the president of PerMaTa, expressed a few reservations. “The barriers [between people’s organisations and government agencies] really need to be minimised,” Onde said.

Manek saw the size of the ILC gathering itself as a sort of barrier to effective action. “It’s almost too big,” Manek said. “I see people here, they are interested in one or two issues only. Maybe there should be a closer focus on fewer issues at once.”

He also suggested that new guidelines from the United Nations Human Rights Council would be useful.

“It would help us,” Manek said. “I think the media can also help to spread awareness and stopping discrimination.”

Quimno for her part was hoping to see some concrete actions taken as a result of her presentation on behalf of the global forum. “There are so many gaps to fill, so I would hope these people here would commit to studying and planning actions to take on the things we recommended. That would be progress.”

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/nothing-us-without-us-hansens-disease-affected-tell-international-gathering/feed/0The Geneva Centre to organize on 18 September a panel debate on the rights of the childhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/geneva-centre-organize-18-september-panel-debate-rights-child/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=geneva-centre-organize-18-september-panel-debate-rights-child
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/geneva-centre-organize-18-september-panel-debate-rights-child/#respondTue, 10 Sep 2019 17:18:53 +0000Geneva Centrehttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163211(Geneva Centre) – A panel debate will be organized by the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue and the Permanent Mission of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the UN in Geneva on the enhancement of access to justice for children in the UAE and the implementation of the Convention on the […]

(Geneva Centre) – A panel debate will be organized by the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue and the Permanent Mission of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the UN in Geneva on the enhancement of access to justice for children in the UAE and the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

The debate entitled “Enhancing access to justice for children in the United Arab Emirates“ will take place on 18 September from 15:00 to 16:30. It will be held in room XXIII, at the United Nations Office in Geneva, on the margins of the 42nd regular session of the Human Rights Council.

The purpose of the conference will be to raise awareness about the need to protect the rights of children in vulnerable situations and to gain deeper understanding of the root causes and risk factors of child abuse and neglect.

In this connection, the conference will take stock of the progress achieved in the UAE to enhance the legal empowerment of children, and identify areas of improvement in line with the provisions set forth in the CRC and other relevant international legal frameworks. It will include the participation of Safety Ambassadors, designed under the precept of the Wadeema Law, who will present the main objectives of Safety Ambassadors programmes and the means available to protect children from any violations they may be subjected to, and raise their awareness of remedies available to address violations.

The panel debate will be opened by HE Obaid Salem Al Zaabi, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the UAE to UN in Geneva.

It will be moderated by Dr Umesh Palwankar, Executive Director ad interim of the Geneva Centre.

The conference will benefit from the participation of the following high-level panellists:

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/geneva-centre-organize-18-september-panel-debate-rights-child/feed/0The Emergence of a Global Voice for Hansen’s Disease Affected Personshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/emergence-global-voice-hansens-disease-affected-persons/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=emergence-global-voice-hansens-disease-affected-persons
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/emergence-global-voice-hansens-disease-affected-persons/#respondTue, 10 Sep 2019 14:17:30 +0000Ben Kritzhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163200The Global Forum of People’s Organisations on Hansen’s Disease, which was attended by members of people’s organisations from 23 different countries, wrapped up in Manila, Philippines, today Sept. 10 after four days of discussion and deliberation. The main outcome was a set of recommendations, which included participants stating that those affected by the disease should […]

Her experience and the chance "to help strengthen Colombia, the world, and my family" through participating in the Global Forum of People's Organisations on Hansen's Disease, sponsored by the Nippon Foundation and the Sasakawa Health Foundation, was like "rising from the ashes" for Lucrecia Vazques from Felehansen Colombia. Vazques' family was hit hard by leprosy, with not only herself, but her son and one-month-old granddaughter being afflicted. Credit: Ben Kritz/IPS

By Ben KritzMANILA, Sep 10 2019 (IPS)

The Global Forum of People’s Organisations on Hansen’s Disease, which was attended by members of people’s organisations from 23 different countries, wrapped up in Manila, Philippines, today Sept. 10 after four days of discussion and deliberation.

The main outcome was a set of recommendations, which included participants stating that those affected by the disease should have more inclusive roles in the global campaign against leprosy.

Asked to share his impressions of the forum with his fellow participants, Joshua Oraga, who is a member of ALM Kenya, a local Hansen’s disease non-profit, told the audience, “We should all familiarise ourselves with the WHO [World Health Organisation] guidelines on strengthening the participation of persons affected by leprosy in leprosy services. That should be our creed, because if you look at that document, you will see that we are the only stakeholders who have an end-to-end role.”

He said that those affected by leprosy or Hansen’s disease had a role in overcoming stigma and discrimination.

“We have a role in the promotion of equity, social justice, and human rights, we have a role in addressing gender issues, we have a role in the dissemination of information, education, communication…. We have a role in advocacy, we have a role in counselling and psychological support, we have a role in training and capacity-building, we have a role in referral services, we have a role in resource mobilisation…. So, we are everywhere!”

The recommendations will be presented on the first day of the International Leprosy Congress (ILC), which is also being held in Manila from Sept. 11 to 13. The recommendations addressed increasing awareness of Hansen’s Disease among the public and governments, calling for greater government support for people’s organisations’ advocacies, taking a larger role in helping to form anti-leprosy policy, and working to build sustainability and more effective networks among organisations spread around the world.

A true people’s forum

To Dr. Takahiro Nanri, Executive Director of SHF, the real value of the recommendations lies not in their details, but in the manner in which they developed.

Nanri noted that the forum’s carefully-planned agenda was quickly thrown off-schedule by the spirited discussions among the participants. “The people really led the forum, and did the work they wanted to do, and I am very happy about that.”

“The recommendations were good ones, but what I think is really important is the process we saw,” he added.

Oraga was likewise pleased and motivated by his experience. Oraga, who had leprosy as a youth, said, “This is the first time I have had the opportunity to take part in a meeting at this level, so imagine my excitement and happiness to be able to come here.”

Oraga also expressed his gratitude for the work that Yohei Sasakawa, World Health Organization’s (WHO) Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination and chairperson of TNF, has done over the last four decades. Sasakawa’s foundations have contributed over USD200 million in financial support for the WHO’s Global Leprosy programme. He also advocated for discrimination and stigmatisation against people affected by Hansen’s disease to be included in the United Nations human rights agenda. The resolution was passed in 2010.

“He has done so much for leprosy around the world, and personally I am grateful. Just think of it, because of Mr. Sasakawa, in three years, maybe leprosy will just be like any ordinary sickness,” Oraga said.

Lucrecia Vazques of Felehansen, Colombia also felt the forum was an extraordinary experience. “It’s been wonderful,” she told IPS through a Spanish translator. “It is like resuscitating after a hard moment.”

Vazques’s bubbly personality belies her own difficult experience with Hansen’s disease, which not only afflicted her, but her one-month-old granddaughter and her son, who was diagnosed first.

“It was hard,” Lucrecia said. “I had no knowledge whatsoever.We thought we would die.”

“But there was something to fight for, and to live for, and here I am. This forum means rising from the ashes. And if I had the choice, I would rise from the ashes again, and I would be right here, to help strengthen Colombia, and the world, and my family,” she said.

Looking ahead

But there is much work to still do.

“Because this was a people-led forum, it gives us direction. As you know, our resources are not limitless. We have an obligation, but it is of course better if we can maximise our efforts, and the recommendations help,” Nanri said.

Nanri reiterated the value of the “process” that he saw evolve during the forum, particularly in the context of the Joint Campaign on World Leprosy Day 2020, which will be observed on Jan. 26 next year.

“This was a step. You don’t go from the ground to the 10th floor in one jump. So now the first step has been taken. The next step is to get the groups around the world to do the activities at the same time,” which is the goal of the joint campaign. “When these recommendations are presented at the ILC, the next step can begin,” he said.

Octogenarian Yohei Sasakawa has travelled to more than 90 countries across the globe; from areas of conflict, to the jungles of Brazil, shaking hands, hugging and washing the feet of Hansen’s disease-affected people. His message is simple: Stop stigmatisation and eliminate the disease.

Sasakawa, who has spent more than 40 years working towards elimination of Hansen’s disease, is the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination and chairperson of The Nippon Foundation (TNF). Since 1975, TNF and its sister organisation, the Sasakawa Health Foundation (SHF), have contributed over USD200 million in financial support for the WHO’s Global Leprosy programme. Both foundations support elimination of the disease globally and provide information and awareness about the disease through the Leprosy Today website.

Sasakawa told IPS in an exclusive interview that he does not believe in sitting in “air-conditioned rooms” looking at data and making decisions about the elimination of the disease. “That will not be helpful to people. You must go to the actual site. That is why I travel across the world — even if it’s scorching deserts or the jungles of Brazil or areas that are difficult to reach or even areas that are dangerous.”

Sasakawa, who says that discrimination and stigmatisation against people affected by Hansen’s disease was the original human rights violation, advocated for this to be included in the United Nations human rights agenda.

Yohei Sasakawa, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination and chairperson of The Nippon Foundation, has dedicated more than four decades towards eliminating Hansen’s disease and putting an end to the stigmatisation that people affected by the disease face globally. Courtesy: Sasakawa Health Foundation/The Nippon Foundation

In 2010, his efforts bore fruition when the United Nations General Assembly Resolution on elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members and accompanying principle and guidelines was passed.

“If you look around us, there are multiple issues in front of us. When it comes to leprosy, people discriminating against people started in the age of the Old Testament. So it goes back a long time in our past history. So I think leprosy is the origin of human rights violation because of the fact that it started such a long time ago,” the recipient of the 2019 Order of the Rising Sun and 2018 Gandhi Peace Prize winner told IPS.

He said that 60 percent of the more than 210,000 new global leprosy cases for 2017 originated in India, adding that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made a strong commitment to make 2030 the year of zero leprosy in the country.

Sasakawa is currently in Manila, Philippines, to attend the TNF/SHF-sponsored Global Forum of People’s Organisations on Hansen’s Disease, which is being held Sept. 7 to 10. He will also deliver a keynote address at the 20th International Leprosy Congress (ILC), which takes place Sept. 11 to 13.

Through his work Sasakawa has met more than 150 national leaders, including presidents and prime ministers, sharing his message and gaining their support and commitment to eliminate leprosy.

However, he stressed, that his efforts alone would not eliminate the disease and called on the youth to “take action in their own countries” and encouraged them to begin discussions for solutions on social media platforms.

YOHEI SASAKAWA, World Health Organization’s (WHO) Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination and chairperson of The Nippon Foundation, speaks to IPS correspondent Stella Paul about his decades long campaign to achieve zero leprosy and eliminate stigmatisation of those affected.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/join-journey-eliminate-leprosy-ambassador/feed/0Eritrea Tops Watchlist of World’s Most-Censored Countrieshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/eritrea-tops-watchlist-worlds-censored-countries/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=eritrea-tops-watchlist-worlds-censored-countries
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/eritrea-tops-watchlist-worlds-censored-countries/#respondTue, 10 Sep 2019 04:21:05 +0000James Reinlhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163191Eritrea has the world’s highest levels of censorship and the most active government in jailing reporters and stifling newspapers, radio and television, a study by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) watchdog says. The authoritarian Horn of Africa nation, which shuttered all independent media in 2001 and currently has some 16 journalists behind bars, is […]

In Eritrea, many of the journalists who were jailed in the 2001 media crackdown remain behind bars, the Committee to Protect Journalists says.
Courtesy: UN Photo

By James ReinlUNITED NATIONS, Sep 10 2019 (IPS)

Eritrea has the world’s highest levels of censorship and the most active government in jailing reporters and stifling newspapers, radio and television, a study by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) watchdog says.

The authoritarian Horn of Africa nation, which shuttered all independent media in 2001 and currently has some 16 journalists behind bars, is followed by North Korea and Turkmenistan as the world’s worst places to work as a reporter, the CPJ says.

“The internet was supposed to make censorship obsolete, but that hasn’t happened,” the group’s executive director Joel Simon said in a statement upon releasing the annual report Tuesday.

“Many of the world’s most censored countries are highly wired, with active online communities. These governments combine old-style brutality with new technology, often purchased from Western companies, to stifle dissent and control the media.”

The top 10 watchlist of countries that “flout international freedom of expression norms and guarantees” also includes Saudi Arabia, China, Vietnam, Iran, Equatorial Guinea, Belarus, and the Caribbean island of Cuba.

In Eritrea, many of the journalists who were jailed in the 2001 media crackdown remain behind bars, the CPJ says. The government controls most broadcast outlets; internet connections are hard to find, and foreign radio signals are jammed.

Eritrean law says reporters must promote “national objectives”. Journalists at the country’s state-run media outlets “toe the government’s editorial line for fear of retaliation”, the CPJ said in a nine-page report.

Eritrea’s mission to the United Nations did not answer an interview request from IPS.

In North Korea, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) runs nearly all the country’s newspapers and broadcasters and sticks to reporting on the latest comments and activities of the reclusive nation’s leader Kim Jong Un.

KCNA has typically been “highly restrictive in its coverage of foreign news”, but that changed in recent months, allowing for reporting on talks between Kim and United States President Donald Trump over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.

Free media also remains largely absent in Turkmenistan, where President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov “enjoys absolute control” over newspapers and broadcasters and wields this power to “promote his cult of personality”, the CPS says.

“A handful of independent Turkmenistan-focused media outlets, such as Khronika Turkmenistana, operate in exile, and anyone who attempts to access the website can be questioned by the authorities,” the report says.

The group also names Saudi Arabia as an offender, spotlighting the murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist and government critic Jamal Khashoggi in the country’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 2018.

The oil-rich kingdom has witnessed a “sharp deterioration” in media freedoms during the ascendancy of the country’s crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, with new anti-terror and cybercrime laws helping to silence journalists, the CPJ says.

The CPJ report was released only days after the hardline religious militant Taliban group kidnapped six local journalists in Afghanistan last week, as they were travelling to a media workshop in Paktika province.

CPJ researchers noted that journalists struggled with war and instability in such countries as Afghanistan, Syria and Somalia, but said that these issues were “not necessarily attributable solely to government censorship”.

The CPJ media freedom ranking is similar to the list compiled by Reporters Without Borders, another watchdog, which also shames Eritrea, North Korea and Turkmenistan as the world’s worst three countries for independent journalism.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/eritrea-tops-watchlist-worlds-censored-countries/feed/0The Costs of Heightened Conflict in the Himalayashttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/costs-heightened-conflict-himalayas/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=costs-heightened-conflict-himalayas
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/costs-heightened-conflict-himalayas/#respondTue, 10 Sep 2019 03:54:20 +0000Omair Ahmadhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163188Omair Ahmad is the South Asia Managing Editor for The Third Pole.

As a series of conflicts in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region come into sharp focus, sidelining local populations, the long-term environmental costs may leave the region degraded, poor and desperate. Courtesy: CC by 2.0/Lensmatter

By Omair AhmadSep 10 2019 (IPS)

As a series of conflicts in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region come into sharp focus, sidelining local populations, the long-term environmental costs may leave the region degraded, poor and desperate.

It has been a month since India cut off communications and implemented a security lockdown in the part of Kashmir it governs. While India has explained that the governance changes it is implementing – rendering significant legislative changes in territory it governs – as an internal matter, the move has drawn strong reactions from Pakistan and China, both of which claim the territory, at least in some part. The political outcome of these changes are a matter for both international relations and domestic politics within the various countries, but this move is one of many political factors that will make cooperation over the environment in the Hindu Kush Himalayas (HKH) far more difficult.

The Indus, a river of troubles

The impact of any political troubles will be felt the most along the Indus, which rises in Tibetan territory controlled by China, winds through the part of Kashmir under Indian control, enters Pakistan, with one stretch entering and exiting Afghanistan, before reaching the sea after traversing Pakistani territory. The two countries where most of the Indus basin is located are India and Pakistan, and their management of the river is largely governed by the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) signed in 1960. The Treaty has survived the outbreak of the 1965 war and the 1971 war between the two countries, as well as a host of skirmishes and conflict, and it is unlikely to be negatively affected now, as it was not affected in the last such crisis in 2017.

The problem, though, is less about the treaty as it has functioned in the past, but how it will function in the future. The IWT was a product of its times, and thus issues like environmental impact were not covered. The recent Hindu Kush Himalayan Monitoring and Assessment Programme (HIMAP) project led by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development highlighted that climate change impacts – everything from irregular rainfall to glacier retreat – in the HKH region would be felt most within the Indus basin. These are new factors that the treaty is not designed to cover. The hope that these could be brought into the treaty has now receded. With the Pakistani government withdrawing its High Commissioner from India, and lowering its diplomatic engagement, it seems unlikely that these issues will get the attention they deserve.

More importantly the Kabul river, part of the Indus, is not covered by any treaty. Pakistani policymakers have been hoping for an IWT-type treaty between Pakistan and Afghanistan would deal with many outstanding issues. But with lowered cooperation between India and Pakistan, the IWT looks less and less like a good example to follow. The idea of including China as well, so that the four countries could all be involved in the joint management of a river basin that they all share now seems almost impossible to imagine.

In the meanwhile conflict will continue to degrade the environment, while also limiting scientific access to the more remote parts of the HKH region. Both Indian and Pakistani troops continue to be deployed on the Siachen glacier, the highest battlefield in the world, costing both countries significant amounts of expenditure and significant loss of lives due to the harsh climatic conditions. The material and garbage accumulated on a glacier has significant negative effects for the environment, not to mention cutting off areas like this from any kind of scientific assessment. Reports like HIMAP, dependent on the cooperation of the various governments, will have to continue to deal with these blind spots.

The dangers of over-centralisation

By its very nature, conflict centralises decisionmaking, as security issues take precedence over everything else. This can have disastrous results on the local environment. This was most clearly demonstrated by the Rohingya crisis in Mayanmar and Bangladesh. The million refugees created due to the crisis led to the environmental destitution of the areas where the refugees were settled in camps.

By laying mines across the areas the routes that the Rohingya took, the Myanmarese military may have meant only to restrict human movement, but these were also traditional elephant corridors. Insurgency and civil war in India’s northeast and Nepal, had a deleterious impact on the rhino population, as poachers found it easy to operate. All 30 rhinos translocated to the Bardiya National Park where killed during the Nepalese civil conflict. In Kashmir, the decades of conflict have led to extensive poaching, the destruction of delicate habitats, and a timber mafia operating with impunity. With militarised borders, populations of key species, such as the yak, will find it difficult to travel freely, leading to limited cross breeding, and the decline of their populations.

The centralising tendencies of governments when it comes to “internal security” issues can possibly be best seen in the Tibetan region, where Beijing insisted on implementing agricultural and animal husbandry practices out of sync with local cultures. The local practices had evolved in consonance with the environment of the region, and had been more sustainable, something that China is now discovering, decades after putting into place self-harming practices. Nevertheless this sidelining of local populations remains a significant part of China’s investments abroad, with the China Pakistan Economic Corridor offering a very clear example. Due to its high political value for Pakistan, the investments are handled at high government levels with military support. Local factors are rarely factored in, so the heavy investment at the Gwadar port being built at the end of CPEC has managed to isolate and marginalise local fisherfolk.

Making the mountains poorer

Lastly, there are significant financial costs of the conflict on local people. Fear of violence undermines the confidence of outsiders willing to invest in a region, leaving people dependent on either government funds or their own limited means. The HKH region is one of the most biodiversity rich regions on the planet, and yet its mountain population are significantly poorer than their fellow citizens in their own countries. Despite potential opportunities for innovation and investment, the remoteness of the communities means that other than heavy infrastructure such as dams – which tend to marginalise local communities even more – investment does not reach these areas.

Fear of conflict will only make this more difficult, depriving the 240 million people that live in the mountainous areas of the HKH region that much poorer. This is at a time when climate change is already negatively impacting traditional crops such as apples, and half of the springs in the HKH region have either dried up, or become seasonal from perennial. Desperate people, who have few options, and whose involvement in governance is limited, make for poor caretakers of the environment.

While discussion of conflict between the countries of the Himalayan region is often spoken of in the same breath as nuclear war, the clear and present danger of a breakdown of cooperation in the region may be simpler. The price of conflict may simply mean that the environment is degraded, species are lost, scientific enquiry is stifled, investment is hobbled, and the hundreds of millions of people dependent on the delicate ecosystem of the HKH region will be made poorer and more miserable. It may not be a global catastrophe, but it will certainly be a series of local catastrophes.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/costs-heightened-conflict-himalayas/feed/0Awareness Should be the Priority in Public Health Efforts against Leprosyhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/awareness-priority-public-health-efforts-leprosy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=awareness-priority-public-health-efforts-leprosy
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/awareness-priority-public-health-efforts-leprosy/#respondMon, 09 Sep 2019 12:44:28 +0000Ben Kritzhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163176Increasing awareness of the continuing existence of Hansen’s Disease (leprosy) is critical to sustaining effective public health efforts against the disease, eliminating the social stigma associated with it, and halting its transmission. That was the consensus reached by participants at the Global Forum of People’s Organisations on Hansen’s Disease in Manila on Sept. 9, following […]

]]>The post Awareness Should be the Priority in Public Health Efforts against Leprosy appeared first on Inter Press Service.
]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/awareness-priority-public-health-efforts-leprosy/feed/0Farm Workers Paying the Price for Cheap South African Winehttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/farm-workers-paying-prize-cheap-south-african-wine/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=farm-workers-paying-prize-cheap-south-african-wine
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/farm-workers-paying-prize-cheap-south-african-wine/#respondMon, 09 Sep 2019 12:30:44 +0000Ivar Andersenhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163175Systembolaget, the Swedish government-owned alcohol monopoly, promises fair conditions – but it also uses its purchasing power to put a downward pressure on prices. At the major South African wine producer Leeuwenkuil, workers suffer as the company tries to cut costs. So far, none of the South African suppliers have been stopped due to violations […]

It has been a long, arduous journey – a journey ridden curiously with obstacles and indifference. Two decades have passed by since the UN General Assembly (UNGA) adopted, by consensus and without reservation, its landmark and norm-setting resolution 53/243 on the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace in 1999.

The current President of the UNGA Ms Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces, former Foreign Minister of Ecuador is convening on 13 September the UN High-Level Forum on the Culture of Peace underlining the importance the world body attaches to full and effective implementation of this forward-looking decision.

It was exactly on that date 20 years ago the UN took its most forward-looking stride in ensuring a peaceful planet for all of us since the Charter of the UN in 1945. The UN Charter arose out of the ashes of the Second World War and the UN Declaration and the Programme of Action on Culture of Peace was born in the aftermath of the long-drawn Cold War.

Simply put, the Culture of Peace as a concept means that every one of us needs to consciously make peace and nonviolence a part of our daily existence. We should not isolate peace as something separate or distant. We should know how to relate to one another without being aggressive, without being violent, without being disrespectful, without neglect, without prejudice.

It is important to realize that the absence of peace takes away the opportunities that we need to better ourselves, to prepare ourselves, to empower ourselves to face the challenges of our lives, individually and collectively.

It is also a positive, dynamic participatory process wherein “dialogue is encouraged and conflicts are solved in a spirit of mutual understanding and cooperation.”

Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury

Each and every individual is important to the process of transformation required to secure the culture of peace in our world. Each person must be convinced that nonviolent, cooperative action is possible.

If a person succeeds in resolving a conflict in a nonviolent manner at any point in time, then this individual has made a big contribution to the world because this singular act has succeeded in transferring the spirit of non-violence and cooperation to another individual. When repeated, such a spirit will grow exponentially, a practice that will become easier each time the choice is made to face a situation, resolve a conflict non-violently.

On 16 December 1998, at a Security Council meeting on the maintenance of peace and security and post-conflict peace-building, I implored that “International peace and security can be best strengthened, not by actions of States alone, but by women and men through the inculcation of the culture of peace and non-violence in every human being and every sphere of activity. The objective of the culture of peace is the empowerment of people.”

As we were coming out of the Cold War, it dawned on us to see how best to take advantage of the end of that era of bitter rivalry and proxy wars and to make peace sustainable.

The Constitution of UNESCO says, “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” The concept of the culture of peace started evolving in this spirit, to promote a change of values and behavior.

Soon after I became the Ambassador of Bangladesh to the United Nations in New York in 1996, I felt that the culture of peace is a marvelous concept that humanity needs to embrace. I took the lead in proposing in 1997 along with some other Ambassadors in a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to include a specific, self-standing agenda item of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on culture of peace.

A new agenda item on the culture of peace was thus agreed upon after considerable negotiating hurdles and the new item was allocated to the plenary of the General Assembly for discussion on an annual basis.

Under this item, UNGA adopted in 1997 a resolution to declare the year 2000 the “International Year for the Culture of Peace”, and in 1998, a resolution to declare the period from 2001 to 2010 the “International Decade for the Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World”.

On 13 September 1999, the United Nations adopted the Declaration and Programme of Action on the Culture of Peace, a monumental document that transcends boundaries, cultures, societies and nations.

It was an honour for me to Chair the nine-month long negotiations that led to the adoption of this historic norm-setting document that is considered as one of the most significant legacies of the United Nations that would endure generations.

I introduced the agreed text of that document (A/RES/53/243) on behalf of all Member States for adoption by the Assembly with its President Didier Opertti of Uruguay chairing the meeting. Through this landmark adoption, the General Assembly laid down humanity’s charter for the new approaching millennium.

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of that momentous action by the most universal global body in a “befitting manner” on 13 September 2019, the on-going 73rd session of the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution 73/126 on 12 December 2018 – with the co-sponsorship of 100 Member States led by Bangladesh – which requested “the President of the General Assembly to give special attention to the appropriate and befitting observance of the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration and Programme of Action, which falls on 13 September 2019, by holding the high-level forum on that date, which will be an opportunity for renewing the commitments to strengthen further the global movement for the culture of peace.”

A significant aspect of the essential message as articulated in the UN documents effectively asserts that the “culture of peace is a process of individual, collective and institutional transformation.” Transformation is of the most essential relevance here.

The Programme of Action identifies eight specific areas which encourage actions at all levels – the individual, the family, the community, the nation, the region – and, of course, the global level. Though the Declaration and Programme of Action is an agreement among nations, governments, civil society, media and individuals are all identified in this document as key actors.

It is essential to remember that the culture of peace requires a change of our hearts, change of our mindset. The Culture of Peace can be achieved through simple ways of living, changing of our own behavior, changing how we relate to each other.

How do we build and promote the culture of peace? To turn the culture of peace into a global, universal movement, the most crucial element that is needed is for every one of us to be a true believer in peace and non-violence.

A lot can be achieved in promoting the culture of peace through individual resolve and action. By immersing ourselves in a mode of behaviour that supports and promotes peace, individual efforts will – over time – combine and unite, and peace, security and sustainability will emerge. This is the only way we shall achieve a just and sustainable peace in the world.

All educational institutions need to offer opportunities that prepare the students not only to live fulfilling lives but also to be responsible and productive citizens of the world. For that, educators need to introduce holistic and empowering curricula that cultivate the culture of peace in each and every young mind. Indeed, this should be more appropriately called “education for global citizenship”.

Such learning cannot be achieved without well-intentioned, sustained, and systematic peace education that leads the way to the culture of peace. If our minds could be likened to a computer, then education provides the software with which to “reboot” our priorities and actions away from violence, towards the culture of peace.

For this, I believe that early childhood affords a unique opportunity for us to sow the seeds of transition from the culture of war to the culture of peace. The events that a child experiences early in life, the education that this child receives, and the community activities and socio-cultural mindset in which a child is immersed all contribute to how values, attitudes, traditions, modes of behavior, and ways of life develop.

We need to use this window of opportunity to instil the rudiments that each individual needs to become agents of peace and non-violence from an early life. I would like to add that young people of today should embrace the culture of peace in a way that can not only shape their lives but can also shape the future of the world.

Let us – yes, all of us — embrace the culture of peace for the good of humanity, for the sustainability of our planet and for making our world a better place to live.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury is Founder of the Global Movement for The Culture of Peace (GMCoP), Permanent Representative of Bangladesh (1996-2001) and Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the United Nations (2002-2007)

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/culture-peace-takes-big-stride-un-observes-20th-anniversary-norm-setting-1999-decision/feed/0Kashmir: How Modi’s Aggressive ‘Hindutva’ Project has Brought India and Pakistan to the Brink – Againhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/kashmir-modis-aggressive-hindutva-project-brought-india-pakistan-brink/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=kashmir-modis-aggressive-hindutva-project-brought-india-pakistan-brink
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/kashmir-modis-aggressive-hindutva-project-brought-india-pakistan-brink/#respondMon, 09 Sep 2019 02:55:36 +0000Abdullah Yusufhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163160Abdullah Yusuf is a lecturer in politics at the University of Dundee.

The Indian government put an end to large scale protests by revoking the autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir – a status provided for under the Indian Constitution. Thousands of troops were deployed and the valley region faced unprecedented lockdown. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

By Abdullah YusufSep 9 2019 (IPS)

August is immensely important in the history of the Asian subcontinent, marking the month that India and Pakistan gained independence from the British in 1947. Now, in 2019, it has once again proved momentous, when, ten days before India’s Independence day celebrations, prime minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked the autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir – a status provided for under the Indian Constitution.

This latest move was a manifesto pledge from Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which claims that Kashmir’s autonomy has hindered its development while fostering an area of thriving terrorism and smuggling.

Soon, thousands of troops were deployed and the valley region faced unprecedented lockdown. Experts say that Modi’s move to tether the Muslim majority of Kashmir is a gamble that could trigger conflict with Pakistan while reigniting an insurgency that has already cost tens of thousands of lives.

Kashmir: a brief history

Until 1947, Kashmir was a territorially well-defined and functional state that had existed for a century before its seizure by the British in 1846. The British decolonisation of the subcontinent in 1947 was instrumental in creating disorder that pushed Kashmir into a repeated cycle of war and stalemate between Pakistan and India, which have both claimed the region as sovereign territory for the last 70 years.

Today, Kashmir’s geopolitical position and glacial water reserves – which provide fresh water and hydro-electric power to millions – add an extra dimension to the existing sectarian and ideological conflict between India and Pakistan over this small northern region.

The Kashmir issue has resulted in three wars between these two countries – in 1947, 1965 and 1999 – triggering numerous UN Security Council Resolutions – which unequivocally call for the Kashmiris’ right to self-determination.

Modi’s Hindu nationalist project

Many within the region feel that Modi’s BJP is brazenly trying to change Kashmir’s ethnic composition to disadvantage India’s Muslim minority by encouraging more Hindus into the region. Since the revocation of Article 370 (which assured the region’s autonomy), Indian Kashmiri leaders who vehemently opposed the decision – including two former chief ministers – have been sent to jail.

Modi’s government has a history of stoking tensions between Hindus and Muslims, with its political rule now focused on “Hindutva”, which translates roughly as “Hindu-ness”, and reframes Hinduism as an identity rather than a theology or religion.

Modi has fostered Hindu nationalism through anti-Islamic rhetoric, accusing Muslim men of attempting to change India’s demographics by seducing Hindu women, as well as encouraging lynching of Muslims falsely accused of eating beef (from the sacred Hindu cow) in BJP controlled states. Clearly, these are tactics designed to expand the notion of Hindutva and further isolate the Muslim population within India. Targeting Kashmir is a crucial part of the strategy.

Dangerous tensions and nuclear options

In the wake of India’s decision to revoke Kashmir’s special status, there are two key questions.

Second, how is the situation affecting the already tense relations between India and Pakistan? India’s land grab comes just five months after a breakdown in relations following claims by India that a Pakistani-based suicide bomber killed 44 Indian soldiers in the Kashmir region, leading to airstrikes by both sides. The situation threatens to reignite this conflict with both countries cautioning the world about the nuclear option.

Addressing a joint session of Pakistan’s parliament on August 6, prime minister Imran Khan briefed lawmakers on the steps his government had taken towards peace in the region. But he maintained the situation in Indian-occupied Kashmir would deteriorate and its neighbour would blame and attack Pakistan.

Days later, Indian defence minister Rajnath Singh stated that India is committed to “no first use” of nuclear weapons, but future policy is dependent on the ever-evolving circumstances. These sentiments have led to international debate over the possibility of nuclear weapons being unleashed.

Parallels with East Timor

With this nuclear threat ever present, the situation in Kashmir is now one of the most dangerous in the world. Since the two countries have consistently failed to make any progress, external help from the international community and the UN is crucial in resolving the conflict and preventing further escalation.

As the world witnessed in the case of East Timor in 1999, independence from Indonesia after two decades of bloodshed was achieved following a referendum held under the stewardship of the UN. This result was not accepted by Indonesia, which launched a scorched-earth campaign, killing more than 1,500 Timorese, displacing nearly half the population, and razing much of East Timor to the ground.

The subsequent progression towards independence and peacebuilding was facilitated by external bodies such as the UN-mandated International Force in East Timor and the Transitional Administration in East Timor, underscoring the importance of support from both the UN and the international community.

The UN didn’t achieve success overnight, but endured through increasing international pressure, combined with a change in the Suharto government. Soon, Indonesia found itself falling out of favour with the international community.

There are parallels here for the Kashmir situation. Although progress may be slow while Modi’s populist BJP remains in power, pressure from the international community would likely go a long way towards pulling both countries back from the brink. In the meantime, while Modi tries to remake India in the BJP’s Hindutva image, for Kashmiris the struggle for self-determination goes on.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/kashmir-modis-aggressive-hindutva-project-brought-india-pakistan-brink/feed/0What Research Reveals about Drivers of Anti-immigrant Hate Crime in South Africahttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/research-reveals-drivers-anti-immigrant-hate-crime-south-africa/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=research-reveals-drivers-anti-immigrant-hate-crime-south-africa
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/research-reveals-drivers-anti-immigrant-hate-crime-south-africa/#respondMon, 09 Sep 2019 02:12:47 +0000Steven Gordonhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163158Steven Gordon works for the Human Sciences Research Council as a senior research specialist. He receives funding from the Centre of Excellence in Human Development at the University of the Witswaterand.

Key leaders from the coalition of faith based organisations, trade unions, NGOs and corporate South Africa marched in 2015, speaking out against xenophobia during a peoples march in Newtown. Courtesy: GCIS

To combat anti-immigrant hate crime, we need to understand its drivers. Scholars at the Human Sciences Research Council have recently made new discoveries about the drivers of anti-immigrant hate crime in South Africa.

But beliefs about the role played by foreign nationals in the country clearly influence how people think about anti-immigrant hate crime. Anti-immigrant statements by politicians also feed into the problem.

Tracking anti-immigrant hate crime

Data from the South African Social Attitudes Survey, conducted annually since 2003, was used. The survey series consists of nationally representative, repeated cross-sectional surveys. It is designed as a time series and is increasingly providing a unique, long-term account of the speed and direction of change of public participation in anti-immigrant behaviour in contemporary South Africa.

Using this data, researchers have found that anti-immigrant hate crime is more widespread than previously thought.

Beginning in 2015, the following item was added in the survey questionnaire:

Have you taken part in violent action to prevent immigrants from living or working in your neighbourhood?

People may be disinclined to disclose this type of potentially incriminating information during face-to-face interviews. But community research suggests that the stigma attached to participation in xenophobic activities may not be as great as we may imagine. Still, the reader should be aware of this possible under-reporting of anti-immigrant behaviour when reviewing the survey’s results.

A minority of the South African adult population reported that they had participated in this form of anti-immigrant aggression. The share of the general public who admitted engaging in violence fluctuated within a very narrow band over the period 2015-2018. This shows the willingness of survey participants to respond to this question varies by only a small margin between the two periods. It also suggests a linear relationship between behavioural intention and attitudes.

The survey results demonstrate the ugly reality of violent anti-immigrant hate crime in South Africa. Although this is an important and dangerous type of prejudice, such crime is not the only form that xenophobia may take. Other forms of peaceful anti-immigrant discrimination are also evident in South African society.

Research has shown that more peaceful forms of anti-immigrant activities are often the first step in a process of escalation that leads to xenophobic violence. Past participation in peaceful anti-immigrant activity (such as demonstrations) was found to be a major determinant of this type of violence.

One of the most troubling findings to have emerged concerned possible participation in anti-immigrant aggression among those who had not taken part before. More than one in ten adults living in South Africa reported in the 2018 survey that they had not taken part in violent action against foreign nationals – but would be prepared to do so.

This finding is quite disturbing given that there may be under-reporting of the propensity for violent action. Anti-immigrant stereotypes were shown to be a robust driver of this kind of behavioural intention. This suggests that anti-immigrant attitudes could have a mobilising effect, spurring individuals towards acts of violent xenophobia.

The results of this study show that millions of ordinary South Africans are prepared to engage in anti-immigrant behaviour. So it is vital that the resources dedicated to combating xenophobia be equal to the size of the problem.

The South African government has a national action plan to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. The progressive measures put forward in the plan include immigrant integration, better law enforcement, civic education and increased immigrant access to constitutionally entitled rights.

Recent research suggests that many of these measures have a degree of public support. The plan was approved in March this year. If it’s to work, it requires adequate resources and support from all sectors of South African society.

Instead of focusing on short-term solutions civil society, foreign governments and the general public must work with the state to progressively implement this plan.

Steven Gordon works for the Human Sciences Research Council as a senior research specialist. He receives funding from the Centre of Excellence in Human Development at the University of the Witswaterand.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/research-reveals-drivers-anti-immigrant-hate-crime-south-africa/feed/0Litigation, a Mechanism to Ensure Justice and End Stigma for Hansen’s Diseasehttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/litigation-mechanism-ensure-justice-end-stigma-hansens-disease/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=litigation-mechanism-ensure-justice-end-stigma-hansens-disease
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/litigation-mechanism-ensure-justice-end-stigma-hansens-disease/#respondSun, 08 Sep 2019 15:12:43 +0000Stella Paulhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163155Professor Ai Kurosaka remembers the day she first interacted with a person affected by Hansen’s disease. It was 2003 and Kurosaka, then a graduate student of sociology at the Saitama University in Japan, had been assigned to interview ex-patients and their family members to document what kind of discrimination they faced. It was a very […]

Professor Ai Kurosaka, author of the book Fighting Prejudice in Japan: The Families of Hansen's Disease Patients Speak Out, describes how a lawsuit has helped Hansen's disease affected people get justice and compensation. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella PaulMANILA, Sep 8 2019 (IPS)

Professor Ai Kurosaka remembers the day she first interacted with a person affected by Hansen’s disease. It was 2003 and Kurosaka, then a graduate student of sociology at the Saitama University in Japan, had been assigned to interview ex-patients and their family members to document what kind of discrimination they faced. It was a very difficult task because nobody wanted to speak or identify themselves.

“They had already faced a lot of social discrimination such as bullying faced by children at school, physical violence by partners at home, refusal of marriage and employment and so on. They were scared of facing more of it by publicly admitting they were associated with Hansen’s disease,” Kurosaka recalls.

Fifteen years later, Kurosaka, who has since written a book on people affected by Hansen’s disease in Japan, is sharing their stories globally.

At the Global Forum of People’s Organisations on Hansen’s disease currently underway in Manila, Philippines, Kurosaka shared one story in which 561 family members of ex-patients of Hansen’s disease filed a class action lawsuit seeking justice and financial compensation against Japan’s government. The forum was organised by Japan’s Sasakawa Health Foundation (SHF) and The Nippon Foundation, which support elimination of the disease globally.

Compensation was sought for the discrimination and violations of rights that family suffered for generations, especially due to a government policy that segregated Hansen’s disease patients from their families before the country was declared free of the disease in 1996.

The suit was filed at the Kumamoto court of Japan in March 2016, and for the first time two generations came together and reveal how their human rights were violated for decades.

This June, the court passed a verdict in their favour and ordered the government to pay compensation.

According to Kurosaka, this is a fine example of using litigation as a tool to hold the government responsible for allowing discrimination and to also right the wrongs that have been done to Hansen’s disease patients and their families.

“Every country where Hansen’s disease patients have been facing stigma, can use this tool to ask for justice. Maybe not everyone will win a monetary compensation, but they can ask the government to abolish any discriminatory law or policies that still exist,” Kurosaka told IPS.

The success story from Japan created a wave of reactions in the global forum as it resonated with many who have faced discrimination on multiple levels. Lilibeth Nwakaeogo, a human rights lawyer from Nigeria, said that she was now considering filing a lawsuit to ask for compensation for the most stigmatised people living with Hansen’s disease in the West African nation.

“In Nigeria, women who have Hansen’s disease face tremendous amount of stigma. They are neglected, treated as untouchable and almost dehumanised. For these women and their children who also face the same kind of stigma, I would consider filing a lawsuit to seek monetary compensation,” Nwakaego told IPS.

However, a lawsuit would take years and could test the strength of the community, cautions Pramod Kumar Jha, a participant from Nepal. Under Nepal’s constitution it is still legal for a man or woman to divorce their spouse on the grounds of leprosy. The removal of this discriminatory provision from the constitution is one of the priorities before the Nepali community of Hansen’s disease-affected people.

“We have already met the Chief Minister and appealed to him to annul this law. Filing a lawsuit could ideally be possible, it would also need for the entire community to stay united and fight a long fight,” he told IPS.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/litigation-mechanism-ensure-justice-end-stigma-hansens-disease/feed/0The Business of Social Enterprisehttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/business-social-enterprise/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=business-social-enterprise
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/business-social-enterprise/#respondSun, 08 Sep 2019 12:25:22 +0000Ben Kritzhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163150Organisations supporting people affected by Hansen’s disease (leprosy) have social rather than capitalist aims, but they need to take a business-minded approach to their work if they wish to be sustainable, experts at a global conference in Manila, Philippines said. In workshops conducted at the Global Forum of People’s Organisations on Hansen’s Disease in Manila […]

Ariel Lazarte of the Coalition of Leprosy Advocates of the Philippines (CLAP) shows off the dried fish production run by patients of a transient house operated by HD (Hope & Dignity) Philippines. Courtesy: Ariel Lazarte

By Ben KritzMANILA, Sep 8 2019 (IPS)

Organisations supporting people affected by Hansen’s disease (leprosy) have social rather than capitalist aims, but they need to take a business-minded approach to their work if they wish to be sustainable, experts at a global conference in Manila, Philippines said.

In workshops conducted at the Global Forum of People’s Organisations on Hansen’s Disease in Manila on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 7 and 8, representatives of organisations from Asia, Africa, and Latin America agreed that sustainability is the biggest challenge they face.

Every organisation faces some uncertainty over the continuity of donor or government financial support, so reducing or eliminating reliance on external funding is considered a critical priority.

At a regional conference of people’s organisations held here in March, SHF Executive Director Dr. Takahiro Nanri stressed that his foundation’s goal was to see its beneficiaries become self-supporting. “In order to be truly sustainable, the organisation needs to develop an income-generating programme,” Nanri said at the time.

Dr. Marie Lisa Dacanay president of the Institute for Social Entrepreneurship in Asia (ISEA) outlined the fundamentals of effective social enterprises, which were derived from research conducted by ISEA in India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and the Philippines. Credit: Ben Kritz/IPS

Fundamentals of social enterprises

On Sunday Sept. 8, Dr. Marie Lisa Dacanay president of the Institute for Social Entrepreneurship in Asia (ISEA) outlined the fundamentals of effective social enterprises, which were derived from research conducted by the institute in India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and the Philippines.

Social enterprises have three common traits, Dacanay explained:

They are driven by a social mission instead of an enterprise mission;

Successful social enterprises are wealth-creating organisations that provide some form of marketable products or services; and

They follow a distributive enterprise philosophy in that profits are directed towards the social mission rather than being collected as return on investment.

In carrying out its mission, a social enterprise faces a number of external and internal challenges, Dacanay said.

External pressures come in the form of climate or environmental factors – a significant concern of agriculture-based enterprises; unfavourable government policies; harmful industry or market practises; inadequate government support for social programs; and institutional corruption.

Internal challenges include difficulty in accessing needed technology; securing initial financing; organisational and management capacity; production efficiency; and developing practical measures of the enterprise’s social impact.

Based on ISEA’s research, successful social enterprises can be organised following an entrepreneur non-profit model, a social cooperative model, a social business model, or what she described as “social entrepreneurship intervention,” which is a hybrid combining characteristics of all three models.
In determining which form of organisation is most suitable to the social mission, Dacanay told IPS, “I think everything starts with the reality. Every social entrepreneur starts with, ‘what are the needs, and the problem?’”

“The first step is really understanding the stakeholders you want to help,” Dacanay continued, “find out what they are doing already, and look at what gaps there are. That, along with the resources and capabilities available, define a way of moving forward, and then the organisational form will follow.”

Social business is still business

In the Saturday workshop, Earl Parreno, the chairman of the Philippines’ Altertrade Foundation, Inc. (ATFI) conducted a training in business planning basics for the assembled people’s organisations.

Defining a social enterprise as one that pursues a triple bottom line philosophy (financial, social, and environmental results), Parreno explained that the fundamentals of business planning must still be applied, but that organisations that are made up of people who are both the providers and beneficiaries of a social mission are often handicapped by a complete lack of capacity.

“Poverty is not just lack of financial resources,” Parreno told the workshop participants in his presentation, “It’s really incapability, a lack of knowledge.”

Developing the capabilities can be an arduous process, but is achievable. One of ATFI’s areas of focus in the Philippines is among poor farmworkers in Negros Province, a centre for sugar production. Parreno described the success of the social enterprise supported by ATFI in marketing Muscovado sugar – semi-raw sugar that was at one time considered “poor man’s sugar,” but is now a premium-priced staple in organic food stores.

“The business ideation is really critical,” Parreno explained to IPS. “We have a saying here in the Philippines: gaya-gaya puta maya, which means something like ‘copycat.’” A common problem among new social enterprises, Parreno said, is a lack of originality in the revenue-generating product or service they wish to pursue.

“What we stress to our social enterprise partners is that they should not conceive a product or service that’s just better, but one that is truly different and has a ‘solidarity market,’” Parreno said, such as the market of “mindful consumers” for organic Muscovado sugar discovered by the Negros sugar farmers. “That solidarity market is so important. It really gives the people’s organisation a fighting chance.”

According to Parreno, developing a sound business plan, from business ideation through resource mapping, feasibility study, and market analysis answers one of the key concerns expressed by many of the forum participants in the post-workshop discussion: The difficulty in securing initial funding to launch a social enterprise.

“The only difference between this kind of (social) business and a conventional business is where the profits go,” Parreno explained. “The discipline and the steps that need to be taken to develop it are very much the same, and if the result is a good business plan, the investors to get it off the ground will follow.”

A poultry and dried fish production project located in Baras, Rizal Province, east of the Philippine capital, employs about 10 people, all residents of a transient house for leprosy patients. It is a good example of a social enterprise that has proved successful.

Ariel Lazarte, a member of Coalition of Leprosy Advocates of the Philippines (CLAP) who runs the social enterprise, told IPS that sales have been good enough that his out-of-pocket expenses have been fully covered by the revenue, as well as providing much-needed funding for the transient house residents.
The social enterprise, part of HD (Hope and Dignity) Philippines, a non-profit managed by Lazarte, makes about 560 dollars a month.

Half of this is ploughed back into the social enterprise and the remainder is used to pay for the living expenses of the patients, including paying for medicines, transport, food, water, and vitamins.
“The only outside funding we had was for [the pen for the chickens],” Lazarte told IPS, noting that the Tikkun Olam Foundation, which supports Hansen’s disease in the country, provided the funding for this.

“The residents of the house who are capable help to tend the chickens, which are layers, and produce the dried fish. We then sell the eggs and fish in the local market.”

Part of the marketing advantage the poultry project has is that the eggs are organic. “We use organic feed for the chickens,” Lazarte said. “No synthetic feed.”

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/business-social-enterprise/feed/0Global Network Key to Strengthening Leprosy Organisationshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/global-network-key-strengthening-leprosy-organisations/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=global-network-key-strengthening-leprosy-organisations
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/global-network-key-strengthening-leprosy-organisations/#respondSat, 07 Sep 2019 14:16:18 +0000Ben Kritzhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163143Organisations of people affected by Hansen’s Disease or leprosy agree that a global network of volunteer groups is key to eradicating the disease, but concrete steps need to be taken to move the idea from an often-discussed concept to a reality. “I don’t think anyone here is not convinced about the importance of a network,” […]

Participants at the first Global Forum of People’s Organisations on Hansen’s Disease which began on Sept. 7 in Manila, Philippines, play a game to build better connectivity among themselves. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Ben KritzMANILA, Sep 7 2019 (IPS)

Organisations of people affected by Hansen’s Disease or leprosy agree that a global network of volunteer groups is key to eradicating the disease, but concrete steps need to be taken to move the idea from an often-discussed concept to a reality.

“I don’t think anyone here is not convinced about the importance of a network,” Dr. Arturo Cunanan Medical Director of Culion Sanitarium and General Hospital told attendees following a workshop on volunteers and networking at the Global Forum of People’s Organisations on Hansen’s Disease in Manila on Sept. 7. “But we need to put our foot forward.”

Artur Custodio Moreira de Sousa, who heads Brazil’s Movement for Reintegration of People Affected by Hansen’s Disease (MORHAN), led the workshop and firmly agreed with Cunanan’s observation, but was more upbeat.

“This forum exists because the network already exists,” Sousa said, speaking through an interpreter. “The idea exists, the network is created, the work needs to continue to solidify and formalise it.”

Sousa conducted the workshop at the forum organised by Japan’s Sasakawa Health Foundation (SHF) and The Nippon Foundation to share some of MORHAN’s success in organising volunteers and networks in Brazil, encouraging the participating groups from Asia, Africa, and South America to consider ways in which they could contribute to an effective global network.

Participants at the first Global Forum of People’s Organizations on Hansen’s Disease which began on Sept. 7 in Manila, Philippines, play a game to build better connectivity among themselves. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Making the most of volunteers

As Sousa described it, the development of a network is in a sense development of a volunteer organisation writ large. MORHAN, which was formed after the fall of Brazil’s dictatorship in 1981, is itself a network of local volunteer groups. Keeping these human resources organised and making the best use of individual talents and intentions is a significant focus area for MORHAN.

“Attracting the people (volunteers) is easy,” Sousa told the forum attendees. “Maintaining the people is very difficult.” Where MORHAN has been successful in this is by encouraging its volunteers to decide how they can contribute. “The people must be free to create,” Sousa said.

Morhan community outreach volunteer Glaucia Maricato, who was doing double duty at the forum as an English interpreter for her Portuguese-speaking colleagues, is a good example of how MORHAN uses volunteers to the best advantage for the individual and the organisation.

Maricato, an anthropologist, explained that she first was introduced to MORHAN in 2010, after the group made an agreement with a group of geneticists to reunite children who had been separated from their families due to leprosy – with either the children or the parents isolated in a sanitarium. “The idea was to use DNA testing to prove who the children’s parents were,” Maricato explained. “I was interested in the project so I got in touch with MORHAN, and then started doing fieldwork,” as the project was related to Maricato’s doctoral studies.

To Maricato, the volunteer work has far more significance than simply applying a person’s skills to a task. “MORHAN was born with democracy in Brazil [in 1981],” Maricato said. “And that spirit really carries on its work, in the DNA testing project and overall. It’s the sense of building equality, removing barriers between people.”

From local organisation to network

Organising volunteers into effective networks can greatly facilitate management of organisations and the services they provide, the chairperson of the Philippines’ Coalition of Leprosy Advocates of the Philippines (CLAP) Francisco Onde agreed.

“Our country is an archipelago, so traveling from one place to another to deal with situations is sometimes difficult,” Onde told the forum participants.

“For example, we had an issue between one of our groups and the administration of the Tala Sanitarium [located north of Manila], but we’re located in Cebu [in the central Philippines]. But through our network and our Luzon coordinator, we were able to get an attorney to assist our colleagues to resolve the problem.”

Scaling up that sort of effective communication and action to a global level is the aspiration of the people’s organisations gathered at the forum, with representatives from the various groups urging their colleagues to join the effort by applying the tools to organising volunteers discussed in the workshop. Kofi Nyarko, president of International Association for Integration, Dignity, and Economic Advancement (IDEA) Ghana stressed that the key to effective action was for people’s organisations “to first help themselves.”

“If we do this, we can do something for the public as much as the public can do something for us,” Nyarko said. “Inclusiveness is very important.”

Evidently encouraged by Cunanan’s call to not let the idea of a global network “be a talking network just within this four-cornered room,” representatives of the people’s organisations in attendance held an impromptu meeting led by Sousa and Cunanan following the workshop that ended the forum’s first day to discuss formalising efforts to create the global network, the initial details of which Cunanan told attendees he hoped would be available for presentation “at the next meeting”.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/global-network-key-strengthening-leprosy-organisations/feed/0First Global Forum of Leprosy-Affected People’s Organisations Kicks off in Manilahttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/first-global-forum-leprosy-affected-peoples-organisations-kicks-off-manila/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=first-global-forum-leprosy-affected-peoples-organisations-kicks-off-manila
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/first-global-forum-leprosy-affected-peoples-organisations-kicks-off-manila/#respondSat, 07 Sep 2019 13:48:27 +0000Stella Paulhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163138Being part of a platform where leprosy-affected people from all over the world can freely interact, exchange and share opinions, ideas, experiences and strategies was always something Tasfaye Tadesse dreamt of. So this week, Tadesse packed his bags and travelled for 36 hours from his home in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to reach the Philippine capital […]

At the first Global Forum of People’s Organizations on Hansen’s Disease, which begun on Sept. 7 in Manila, Philippines, participants present their ideas on entrepreneurship models to attain sustainability. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella PaulMANILA, Sep 7 2019 (IPS)

Being part of a platform where leprosy-affected people from all over the world can freely interact, exchange and share opinions, ideas, experiences and strategies was always something Tasfaye Tadesse dreamt of.

So this week, Tadesse packed his bags and travelled for 36 hours from his home in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to reach the Philippine capital of Manila.

The journey was worth it.

Tadasse, the managing director of Ethiopian National Association of Persons Affected by Leprosy, arrived to attend the first-ever global forum for people with Hansen’s disease, commonly known as leprosy. There he found an increasing family.

Participants from 23 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean are meeting from Sept. 7 to 10 at the Global Forum of People’s Organizations on Hansen’s Disease.

Today, Sept. 7, at the first day of the 4-day forum, Tadesse shared some of the activities and developments that had taken place recently in Africa, including providing feedback on a a regional meeting of all people living with leprosy in East and West Africa.

Held in February, the meeting was the first time that leprosy-affected people from across the continent came together as one community with a common goal of dealing with the challenges they face.

“We only knew about each other until then, but never spoke directly. The assembly brought us together and helped us have a conversation. We came up with a number of ideas and recommendations,” Tadesse told IPS.

One of the recommendations was to not use the word leprosy as it still evokes negative reaction.

“People start to judge the moment they hear the word leprosy, without even caring to find out if the person is cured or almost cured. So, this is clear stigmatisation and its very common everywhere,” he said.

Other recommendations included the African regional assembly deciding to form a social media group for smooth and regular communication among the areas impacted by Hansen’s disease across Africa.

“I didn’t know how to use what’s app before. So after I joined, I felt a sense of accomplishment,” he said. The group first included only the five countries that participated in the African regional assembly: Morocco, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania and Ghana.

Since February, people from organisations in other countries such as Kenya, Mozambique and South Africa have joined. With the network expanding, Tadesse says it is becoming truly pan Africa.

Lilibeth Nwakaego is a Lagos-based lawyer who has been instrumental in creating and growing the What’s app group across Africa.

“Information is power. So, sharing information is not just about good communication, but also about empowerment of [leprosy-affected] people,” said Nwakaego.

“We now have eight African countries in our What’s app network and I am going to make everyone an admin, so that they can all keep adding new members in their respective countries. We need to take information and ideas out of papers and meeting rooms to the people who need that and this is our way to do so,” Nwakaego told IPS.

The forum participants also learnt of recommendations from Asia and Latin America, regions which had also organised similar assemblies earlier this year. Speaking of the event held in Manila in March, Frank Onde, chairperson of Coalition of Leprosy Advocates of the Philippines (CLAP), recalled how the assembly had highlighted the connection between climate change and leprosy.

“Our participants from Kiribati are suffering more because of climate change. There are now more flooding which is adding to the challenges. During flooding, one must evacuate to higher ground but people who have advanced stage of leprosy cannot do this and so they are suffering. It was the first time that we came to hear about such an issue,” Onde said at the forum.

Foustino Pinto, the national coordinator for the Movement for Reintegration of People Affected by Hansen’s Disease (MORHAN) – an organisation of leprosy affected people in Brazil, shared the highlights from the Latin American regional assembly that took place this April.

One of the biggest outcomes of the assembly was a demand to adopt a higher level of respect and make leprosy affected people central to any policy decision.

“Right now, what we see is that our voices are casually heard and our opinions and ideas are not really listened to. There is a lack of seriousness. Take the term leprosy, for example. Who is deciding how this disease should be mentioned? Not the people living with it! So, we feel that there is a lot of room for improvement here. For us, the most important issues are dignity, equality and respect for the human rights of leprosy-affected people,” Pinto told IPS.

Earlier while delivering the key-note address, Dr. Maria Francia Laxamana, the assistant secretary in the Philippines Ministry of Health, said that there was a need to make policies that would truly help leprosy-affected people empower themselves. In the Philippines, the government was considering providing subsidies to all leprosy-affected people. Such a policy would help the leprosy-affected people live a better life as their current economic condition was a big concern.

Takahiro Nanri, executive director of SHF, called out for the free flow of ideas and experience sharing among the participants. This would help lead the future course of action to eliminate leprosy, he said.

The participants will also attend the International Leprosy Congress scheduled to take place in Manila Sept. 11 to 13.